Breaking the Ice
by anambermusicbox
Summary: "Life is limited, that's why it's so precious. Since there's a limit, we try our best to live." In which Aoko and Kaito struggle to make sense of a world born before they began, and the universe would tear them apart and bring them together again. - Written for Poirot Cafe's Themed Contest #21: Ice
**Author's Note: Okay. I told Taliya (whose stories you should definitely check out) that I would write a fic about snowcones. Thus, with nothing but the prompt and the last line in mind, I tried writing everything from a hostage situation to KID cracking a supposedly uncrackable safe. _Tried_ being the key word. It either strayed too far from the actual prompt or was too choppy. And then this idea happened, and everything just... _fit._ The final product has significantly less action. Do tell me if you like it!**

 **Disclaimer. Thanks for reading!**

…

" _Life is limited, that's why it's so precious. Since there's a limit, we try our best to live."_

– _Hattori Heiji_

…

The first time Aoko had a snowcone, she was eight, the age in which one, brimming with whimsical fantasies and clueless wonder, was innocent of any of life's cruelties.

Or at least, that was the way it was supposed to be.

It was an accident, they said. That fateful night, childhood innocence had gone up in smoke along with world-renowned magician Kuroba Toichi's magic show, disintegrating in sheets of searing flames and leaving nothing but ashes.

Kaito's smile was never quite the same again.

Aoko didn't see Kaito for days afterwards. According to Chikage-obasan, he didn't even take a step outside his room. Aoko knows she can't even begin to comprehend his pain.

She tries anyways.

One afternoon, she's lying flat on her back on her bed, staring at the ceiling, when the light flickers for a split second. She remembers when, a few months ago, her father had been busy attempting to prevent KID from stealing a ruby and the lightbulb burnt out. Kaito, upon learning of this, had come over and insisted on replacing it himself.

 _I saw Oyaji do it once. It'll be fine!_

She remembers scouring the house for the extra florescent bulbs, digging through long forgotten corners and brushing aside layers of dust off long forgotten items. She remembers Kaito standing on tiptoes, balanced on two chairs and a precariously perched stepstool, too-short arms straining to reach the lightbulb. She remembers her joy when she'd tried the light switch as per Kaito's instruction and the light finally shone through. The memory doesn't quite leave her mind as she grabs her piggy bank and shakes out every coin of her savings, as she storms into the adjacent house and demands to take Kaito out for something cold to eat.

Of course, she'd intended to purchase ice cream from the corner store a few blocks away, but on the way, Aoko notices a snowcone cart at the edge of the park, sees the crushed ice and the colourful syrups on display under a big blue umbrella.

 _Ne, Kaito, you wanna try something new?_

 _Sometimes_ , Aoko is learning, sometimes certain things don't really matter. Not the 60% she'd received on her arithmetic quiz _that_ day because she didn't 'show her work', just a few hours before Kaito's world burned down. Not whether or not their blue and red snowcones were actually blue raspberry and cherry or just sugar and artificial flavouring. Not the passersby and their curious stares at the two children, snow cones in hand, perched on a wooden bench slightly damp from yesterday's rain. Not even words – not then, not really. Kaito's lips mouthed unuttered thanks, and Aoko realizes that sometimes, maybe it was enough to just be there for someone.

The second time Aoko had a snowcone, she was sixteen, the age in which one struggled to make sense of the world born before they began.

A few weeks earlier, Kaitou KID had reappeared, stealing a 400 million yen diamond along with every front page of the newspapers. She remembers being startled into dropping half a dozen eggs when her father, unmistakable joy written plainly across his face, burst into the house with this announcement. She remembers seeing a renewed vigor in his demeanor, his humdrum existence of the past eight years all but forgotten. The day following, there is no mop chase during class (for once). Instead, Kaito just stares out the window, as he sometimes does. This time though, it's different somehow, for whatever reason unfathomable to Aoko. Maybe it's because he hasn't quite mastered his infamous poker face yet, or maybe it's because he's just a little more tired than usual, but she sees uncertainty and fear in his blue eyes, yet, along with it, newfound purpose in him, as if he'd been rehearsing for a role his entire life and didn't quite know what it was until then.

It was an atypically hot day, and Kaito treated Aoko to snowcones, either out of the kindness of his heart or to make up for a particularly rowdy mop chase during Sensei's trigonometry lecture. Probably both.

Then, she had been a little younger and a little more naïve. If she noticed the shadows in his eyes and the brittleness in his smile, she didn't mention it, reasoning that maybe everyone was allowed a private secret or two.

And ultimately, she trusted him.

The third time Aoko had a snowcone, she was seventeen, the age in which one, on the cusp of adulthood, believed oneself to be invincible.

 _Invincible._ She wonders if that was how Kaito felt. Clothed in white, balanced on the rooftop ledge of a 50-story skyscraper, countless artificial lights illuminating the dark city below. Laughter echoing as he ran and jumped and fell and flew, defying not just gravity and the KID Task Force's demands (as expressed in vociferous yells and profanities, of course), but perhaps even the universe itself.

Maybe the truth was, Aoko had subconsciously known Kaito was KID. It wasn't until KID's most recent heist had gone haywire - courtesy of heinous black trench coated men and their big guns - that she'd received concrete evidence of her best friend's lies.

And Aoko was _pissed_.

The thing was, she didn't even know who or what to be pissed _at._ Kaito himself was an easy option, of course. Either because, _yeah_ , he'd been deceiving her for the better part of a year, or because Kaito evidently thought so little of her in that she'd throw away over a _decade_ 's worth of friendship over it. KID was an even easier option, for obvious reasons. But there were criminals far worse than KID, a fact she knew and had observed first-hand that night in the form of those scum of the earth gunmen ( _and that psychotic bastard with the stupid horseshoe mustache-!)_ and why the _heck_ wasn't there a formal investigation investigation of them because _dammit_ , that was her idiot of a best friend getting shot at out there _and-_

Well.

Either because of the sweltering afternoon heat or for nostalgia's sake, Aoko finds herself purchasing a snowcone, asking for the blue syrup. As Aoko digs through her wallet for a five hundred yen bill, a little boy of eight or nine runs up to the vendor, a middle-aged woman with shoulder length hair. Aoko, knowing that it was not her place, prevents herself from eavesdropping on their exchange of words, but after the boy runs away and the woman gives her a sheepish apology, Aoko notices her worn sundress and the look in her eyes, not-quite-concealed anxiety. Aoko takes out a thousand yen bill instead. _I don't have a five hundred_ , she lied. _Don't worry about the change._

Aoko had been avoiding Kaito for days now. That too, was easy – it was summer break, and Kaito had granted her the space she, _rather forcefully_ , demanded.

Life is made up of moments. For Aoko, many of them involved Kaito, be it graduation or grocery shopping or simple afternoons spent with thousand-paged biology textbooks and leftover chocolate cake.

Or eating snowcones on a park bench with Kaito, two little adults under the endless blue sky, silently contemplating the mortality of life.

 _Invincible_. Somehow, it doesn't feel quite right. Doesn't quite fit, like the way a puzzle piece refused to fit where it knew it didn't belong. Instead, she thought about Kaito, not KID. She imagines him taking a deep breath, a split second of hesitation, before beginning his show. She imagines him in a slightly oversized tuxedo, inherited - among other things - from his father, imagines the way he moved in it, determined to live up to a legacy that had been thrust upon him.

She thought about how a little after Kaito's father died, her own father had been transferred back to homicide because KID had seemingly dropped off the face of the earth.

She thought the boy who approached her, a complete stranger, all those years ago and conjured up a rose out of thin air because she looked lonely and he wanted to cheer her up. About the best friend who she had shared all those moments with - the same moments she recalls when she lies in bed and stares at the ceiling, be it during day or the dead of the night. About the magician who deemed it necessary to persist in a breakable masquerade, even when he wasn't playing a phantom in the moonlight. About the child who cried over his father's dead body.

And suddenly, it didn't really matter anymore – phantom thieves, snow cone philosophies, the universe or whatever. She tosses the crumbled paper cone into the waste bin as she walks past the street corner and texts Kaito.

 _Meet me at the clocktower._

…

The station was always more or less busy. In the center of the bustle stood an old clocktower. A lady with bleached hair fumbles with a dozen and a half shopping bags as she carries on in an animated conversation, phone pressed between her ear and her shoulder. A little girl with pigtails scurries past her to chase a ball. Meters away, a familiar young man comes into sight as he turns the corner and rushes toward a young woman standing in the shadow of the clocktower.

"Hi," Aoko says.

"Hey," Kaito replies, a little out of breath.

She opens her mouth to say something, anything, but nothing comes. What do you do when you realize that you never really knew the person you thought you knew best? What do you say to break the ice again? Nothing was perfect – that was a fact of life, Aoko knew. But maybe the truth was, imperfection accentuated beauty. And for Aoko, that was more than enough.

The sky was dyed brilliant shades of pink and orange and yellow as the sun set in the horizon. In the background, the clocktower chimed the time. It certainly wasn't the same as ten – _more than ten_ – years ago, but maybe it wasn't all that different either, because in that moment, Aoko knew exactly what to do, exactly what to say, if only because it was what he said to her the first time they met.

And it was a start.

It was _the_ start.

She holds out her hand to him.

"I'm Nakamori Aoko. Nice to meet you."


End file.
